Respected historian Alice Kessler-Harris recently published a biography of Lillian Hellman entitled "A Difficult Woman" -- which book critic Maureen Corrigan describes as the most tactful adjective one can use to describe Hellman. Hellman was likely the most successful American woman playwright of the 20th century -- one who also drank heavily, chain-smoked, and lived a sexually liberated life, while also having a 30-year open relationship with fellow writer Dashiell Hammett.

Hellman's success as a playwright began with her 1934 play "The Children's Hour," telling the story of a two teachers at a girls' school falsely accused of lesbianism -- a subject so explosive at the time that when the play was adapted into the movie "These Three" in 1936 the accusation had to be changed to a conventional affair with a man. Over the years, Hellman achieved financial success with other plays like "The Little Foxes," "Watch on the Rhine," and "Toys in the Attic."

Hellman lived a controversial life -- besides her unconventional personal life, she was an avid supporter of the Soviet Union even after Stalin's crimes became well-known, and refused to "name names" before Congress during the early 1950s; yet, she escaped punishment and became something of a hero for refusing to testify. After giving up play-writing, she wrote three best-selling memoirs.

And there her reputation might have rested were it not for an incident in 1979 when Dick Cavett interviewed writer Mary McCarthy.

McCarthy, who was herself a respected author, declared of Hellman that "Every word she writes is a lie, including and' and the.'"

Hellman happened to watch the interview that night. Though already in failing health at 74, she immediately filed a libel lawsuit against McCarthy seeking more than $2 million in damages that -- ironically -- boomeranged back to create much of the legacy for which Hellman is remembered today.

An ironic twist came early in the case, when McCarthy's attorneys tried to get the case dismissed on the ground that her statement was protected by the First Amendment. The judge ruled, however, that the comments could be defamatory, and that Hellman wasn't a "public figure," which would have given McCarthy far more legal protection -- even though Hellman was American's most famous woman playwright, a best-selling author, and had even appeared in a recent fur coat ad captioned, "What Becomes a Legend Most?"

Though the ruling kept the case alive, as things turned out, Hellman might have been better off if she had lost. First, the ruling attracted some hefty legal talent to McCarthy's side, especially noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams.

And it forced McCarthy to start combing Hellman's work, especially her memoirs, for evidence supporting McCarthy's allegation about Hellman's dishonesty. Attention soon focused on the second volume, "Pentimento," published in 1973, especially one chapter that was also the basis for the 1977 motion picture "Julia" starring Jane Fonda as Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave as Hellman's friend, referred to only by her first name, who supposedly helped Jews get out of Germany before World War II. Hellman's memoir recounted how Hellman aided Julia by smuggling $50,000 in cash into Germany to help with the underground work. Julia supposedly was later captured by the Gestapo and died at their hands.

As McCarthy looked into what Hellman claimed was this true story, and Hellman's role in it, the story's credibility began to falter. Evidence emerged that Hellman may have "borrowed" the tale without attribution from the life story of a woman named Muriel Gardiner, who was active in anti-Fascist resistance -- but who, unlike Julia, survived the war. In fact, as McCarthy's team examined the facts, details of Hellman's own life didn't correspond with known evidence of such resistance efforts. Far from being a true story, it started to become clear that there was no "Julia" and that Hellman never helped with such resistance efforts.

Hellman died in 1984, wheelchair-bound and weighing only 80 pounds -- much to Mary McCarthy's frustration, who by that time was eager for a trial she believed would vindicate her. But in a sense, she did win, because the doubts sown about the truth of Hellman's memoir continue to this day; Hellman is regarded by many as a fabulist, at least where her memoirs are concerned.

There is deep irony here, given that Hellman's first literary splash, "The Children's Hour," was about the toxic consequences of a lie. But the lie told by the character in Hellman's play hurt someone else; the lies that, late in her life, Hellman was accused of telling hurt just one person -- herself.

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.